


there's a dead girl in the pool (i'm the dead girl in the pool)

by TheFandomLesbian



Series: Spencer's Criminal Minds One-Shots [8]
Category: Criminal Minds (US TV)
Genre: Angst, F/F, Femslash, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, Jemily - Freeform, Nightmares, Romance, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-11
Updated: 2020-11-11
Packaged: 2021-03-09 18:00:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,464
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27500407
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheFandomLesbian/pseuds/TheFandomLesbian
Summary: Emily has suffered from horrible nightmares for months after Haley's death. JJ offers her support, and Emily discloses some secrets to her. JJ encourages her to tell Hotch the truth.
Relationships: Jennifer "JJ" Jareau/Emily Prentiss
Series: Spencer's Criminal Minds One-Shots [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1940851
Comments: 12
Kudos: 69





	there's a dead girl in the pool (i'm the dead girl in the pool)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ItsEmilyFreakingPrentiss](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ItsEmilyFreakingPrentiss/gifts).



> This is for a prompt where JJ saves Emily, and I had a very clear picture in my head of JJ saving Emily from a burning building, but then this occurred to me, so I decided to save the burning building fic for another day. This is a concept I've been playing with for awhile, and I hope to revisit in the future!

The darkness of the night clustered over the poolside where Emily sat. The cool November air tingled on the back of her neck. The late night breeze swept through the trees, and the dry leaves rattled where they brushed up against each other at the stirring. Pants rolled up, Emily plunged her feet into the clear blue water. It was frigid, yet it burned. 

“ _ We have to give him something, or we’ll get nothing from him. _ ” Hotch’s voice echoed around her. She lifted her head, sweeping the scene, but she could see nothing beyond where the overhead lamplight illuminated the in-ground pool. Grunting to herself, she leaned forward, staring at the icy, clear haze of the water, the scent of chlorine floating up to her. Her feet quickly numbed where she had submerged them in the depths of the swimming pool. 

“ _ Emily… Prentiss. _ ” A pained chill wracked her body. Again, she snatched her head up, looking for the source of Carl Arnold’s voice. “ _ I know all about you. _ ” The smirk in his voice sent a quiver down her spine. The voices echoed from overhead, like God himself spoke to her, God and Satan arguing above and she, caught in the middle, had nowhere to go in this snowglobe where only the freezing swimming pool had any light. “ _ You took mine. But I see you lost yours. _ ” Arnold jabbed at Hotch overhead, mocking him, his divorce—mocking her, too, though he didn’t realize it. Emily scratched at her arms, unable to escape the sensation of bugs crawling all over her arms. “ _ Let me guess. A casualty of the job. _ ”

“ _ My job is what put you in here. _ ”

“ _ But then it’s the children that suffer the most, wouldn’t you agree? _ ”

“ _ You would know more about that than me. _ ”

“ _ I need to see those photos. _ ”

Emily pushed off of the side of the pool and sank into the frozen depths. A shudder wracked through her. It stole her breath, the cold water, as it rose around her—up over her ankles, her calves, her knees, her hips. She lowered herself, lower still. Her abdomen tightened at the sensation. She could not breathe. Her ribs refused to expand, her whole body collapsing in on itself at the sheer, bitter cold. Her breasts ached and throbbed. “ _ These images will be his undoing. And our way in. _ ”

She couldn’t escape Hotch’s voice. She lifted her head back up to the star-spattered sky, face contorting in agony. “They’re not just images,” she insisted, breathless; the cold water stole her voice, too. 

“ _ That’s exactly what they are. _ ”

Emily tried to relax in the water. Her tense muscles refused to give way. “So—” she gasped to no one, no one at all, no one but the empty November air and the glacial water piercing her to the very bone. “We are using a dead twelve-year-old girl in a bathing suit as a bargaining chip for what?” 

The water stirred. Emily lifted her head.  _ There’s something in the water. _ A splash, a floundering, water spraying toward her… A stream of bubbles.  _ Someone’s drowning! _

She hadn’t seen anyone enter the water. She hadn’t seen anyone at all. She had heard nothing but Hotch and Carl Arnold and her own desperate voice trying to argue that the images of dead children did not belong anywhere near men who would find them arousing. But something, someone, sank beneath the water—she could make out the figure, the shock of blonde hair, the clothing—and the bubbles ceased.  _ She’s dying! _

Sucking in as deep of a breath as she could manage, Emily plunged under the water. Eyes wide open, she dove after the form sinking farther and farther from her reach. One wave of her arms parting the water, propelling her nearer, and another, and another, and she grabbed two fistfuls of the woman’s clothing and heaved with her feet off of the bottom of the pool.  _ She’s so heavy. _ The chlorine burned her eyes, obscuring her vision. She pushed up from the bottom again. Bubbles streamed from her own mouth. Her chest ached. She needed to  _ breathe— _

The form gave way, and with her insistence, began to float back upward toward the surface of the water. 

Emily’s face breached first. She sucked in a deep breath. Her eyes stung and smarted and wept from the chemical irritation, and blindly, she fumbled toward the edge of the pool. “You’re okay—” she panted. “It’s okay, I’ve got you, I’ve—” She grabbed onto the edge of the pool and hoisted herself up. Collecting the limp figure under the arms, she hoisted her up onto the poolside, her clothes weighed down by the water. Emily couldn’t speak for the exertion. 

She pounced on top of the woman, all limp and lifeless. “Wake up, wake up, can you hear me—” With one fist, she wiped at her eyes in a futile attempt to focus on the blurred face. 

Blinking the chlorine from her eyes, she squinted down at her. 

“Haley?” she breathed, voice thin and incredulous. “Oh, no, no—” That was Haley underneath her, all sodden and dead, lips cyanotic, eyes unseeing. “No, no, no—” Emily parted her mouth, tilting her head back to give her a breath—blood poured out from between her lips. “Haley, no, no—” Emily placed her hands on her chest. With the first compression, the wound on her abdomen split open, and blood gushed out of her. “No, it’s gonna—it’s gonna be okay, it’s gonna—” 

With her wet hands, she pressed against the wound, but it only seemed to grow wider, until the breadth of both of her hands could not cover it, and the scarlet flowed freely from between her fingers. “I can’t, I can’t stop, I can’t stop it—” The blood was cold, like Haley’s body, like her blue lips, like her wet blonde hair. 

Emily sat bolt upright in bed. Sweat coated her from head to toe. Beside her, JJ slept peacefully, all twined in the blankets but naked underneath from where they had made love just a few hours before. “Jesus fucking Christ.” Emily shoveled a hand through her hair. The sweat made it cling to her scalp. She tremored. The bed rattled.  _ I’m going to wake her up. _ She peeled the sheets from her sweaty body—they stuck to her—and stumbled to pick up her robe off the floor where they had discarded it before bed. 

Without the insulation of the blankets, Emily lost all of her heat, and the cool air of the apartment sent goosebumps across her skin. She tied the robe tightly around herself. It didn’t help. So she donned a pair of thick socks.  _ I need a cigarette. _

She didn’t smoke around JJ. She didn’t smoke much in the first place, but never when JJ was here—she didn’t want to face the judgment or the scolding or the inevitable questions that would arise. But she needed  _ something _ to decompress—

Whenever she closed her eyes, Haley’s glassy eyes met hers again. 

With quivering hands, Emily took her pack of cigarettes out of the kitchen drawer with her lighter, and she opened the window to climb out onto the platform of the fire escape. She parked there with her feet two steps below her ass. The frozen, rusted metal bit through the robe. At least now she had a reason to shake with the cold. 

She struck her lighter, lit the end of her cigarette, and lifted it to her lips, taking a long drag. The hot air filled her lungs. The nicotine jarred her brain. If she closed her eyes, she didn’t have to see Haley’s cyanotic lips anymore. She could see Haley the way she had known her—here, in this apartment, beside her in the bed where JJ now lay sleeping, naked as the day she was born and blonde hair strewn out behind her on the pillowcases as she laughed.

Oh, Haley had had a beautiful laugh.

Hotch had said so, once, after the funeral. She’d found him at the grave, late in the evening when she had gone in the hopes that he wouldn’t be there—but he was there, alone, looking at the marker, and he looked up at her, and she knew he thought she had come to support him, and she couldn’t tell him any different. “ _ She had a beautiful laugh, _ ” he said, and she said, “ _ Yes, she did, _ ” and he thought it was just an empty platitude, that that was what one did when a friend had lost a lover, agreeing with whatever positive things the friend had to say. He didn’t know she spoke from experience. 

She could see Haley pushing Jack in his stroller at Rock Creek Park. The autumn had colored all of the leaves rusty and sunshine and other colors of the perfect sunset. Jack had fallen asleep. “ _ What are we going to do when he finds out? _ ” Emily asked. 

Haley shot her a look. “ **_Don’t_ ** _ start with me about ways to save your job. I’ve been through that enough. _ ” 

Emily snorted. “ _ Alright. That’s fair. _ ” She stuck her hands in her pockets. This wasn’t anything serious. They both knew it. Haley couldn’t, or wouldn’t, love someone else who would put her through the same things that Hotch had. And Emily loved JJ—JJ, who was pregnant with that mediocre man who needed subtitles every time he spoke. They both needed someone temporarily, just for right now, and one filled the other’s temporary needs. “ _ I think it might be best if you told him, though. _ ”

“ _ Why the hell would I do that? So he can be mad at me instead of you? _ ”

“ _ Well, _ ” Emily mumbled, “ _ it’s not like he can  _ **_fire_ ** _ you. _ ”

Haley took her hand, put it on the stroller handle, covered it with her own. “ _ Look _ ,” she said pointedly, “ _ I  _ **_know_ ** _ Aaron. If he hasn’t profiled it out of us already, he’s never going to figure it out on his own. There’s no reason for us to hurt him like that. I’ve done enough to break his heart for a lifetime. Just let him remain in blissful ignorance this one time. _ ”

Emily felt warm and soft inside, like melted chocolate. Haley didn’t want to hurt Hotch; she didn’t want to break up her family. She was a good person, and in another universe, Emily loved her instead of JJ, and they were happy together. The autumn leaves blew past Haley’s head, the breeze grabbing her hair, and the colorful leaves made a perfect picture for Emily’s memory as Haley leaned in to kiss her under the great sycamore tree. 

The window behind Emily squeaked as JJ lifted it. Emily flinched at the sudden sound. Turning back, she saw JJ, and she went to hastily attempt to snuff out the cigarette—as if she could hide the evidence now. “Hey,” JJ consoled, “it’s alright.” She crawled out of the window onto the fire escape and sat beside her on the platform, cinching the robe tighter around herself. “It’s cold out here.” Emily averted her eyes, flicking off the butts of her cigarette. “Are you going to tell me what’s going on?”

Emily licked her lips. “What do you mean?” 

“You’ve been having nightmares for months, Em.” JJ put a hand on her knee, squeezing gently. “What’s going on?” Emily exhaled a long cloud of gray smoke from between her lips. The cigarette was almost gone. It had calmed her for a moment, but now, her heart thundered inside of her again. “Do you want to talk about it?”

_ Do I want to talk about it? _ “No,” Emily breathed through parted lips, “but… I think, maybe, I need to.” 

JJ tilted her head. Emily crossed her arms over her chest, bowing her head forward. Through the slats in the grates of the fire escape, she looked down at the city below, the lights, everything dancing so distantly away from her, and this night felt surreal, like she was swept into another dream and would soon enough awaken away from this strange reality. “If you want to,” JJ prompted quietly, “I’m here to listen.” 

Emily opened one hand. JJ placed hers inside of it. “You might think less of me,” she admitted.

“There’s  _ nothing _ you could do to make me think less of you, Emily.” JJ spoke sternly, the way a teacher would address a misbehaving child. “I want to know what’s going on, so I can help you.”

_ She’s so pure. _ JJ was so pure. Haley was so pure. Emily had been blessed to touch both of them, to know both of them, when she was so unworthy of either of them. Who could have been with Haley the way that she had been and not completely fall in love with her? Surely Haley had deserved that from her. Surely Haley had earned a committed, loving partner who could grant her everything she desired for her family. Surely Haley had warranted a future in which she did not bleed out on the floor of her own home, in which her ex-husband did not collect her body and weep, in which her ex-girlfriend did not stand back afraid to approach or to speak because their tryst was still a secret. 

Emily gulped. “I… I did something very bad.” She shifted her jaw. “If—If someone you loved very much died,” she said, “would you… would you want to know if they did bad things?” 

“What do you mean?”

“Say—”  _ I don’t want to tell you everything, I can’t, not yet, not yet. _ “This is just an example. Say, for the past few months, I was—I was sleeping with Penelope. Behind your back. And then, tomorrow, I get mowed down by a bus crossing the street to the Seven-11. Would you want Penelope to tell you?” 

JJ frowned. Her brow furrowed, deep in thought, and she rested her head on Emily’s shoulder. Emily’s eyes faced downward, at the city below them. JJ’s reached upward, toward the sky, though the city lights blotted out most of the stars from view. “I don’t know,” she said finally after a long moment’s thought. “I guess… I guess it wouldn’t really be right for Pen to go out of her way to tarnish my memory of you, would it?” She rubbed her hand over Emily’s, trying to draw warmth from the friction between their skins. “But at the same time, if she was grieving, too… it doesn’t seem fair for her to have to keep it a secret, just because you were cheating on me—that’s on you, not on her, and you’re dead.” She looked up at Emily. “In this, uh, hypothetical scenario.”

“Right, I understood.” 

JJ’s brow quirked. “I have to ask. You’re not sleeping with Penelope, are you?”

Emily shook her head. “I tried a few years ago, but she wouldn’t tap it.”

“ _ Really? _ ” JJ asked, incredulous. “Does she think she can do better?” 

“She is doing better. She has Derek.” 

“Derek is  _ not _ better.” JJ squeezed her hand as Emily fell silent once again, and she sidled up beside her, pressing her whole flank against Emily’s body so they could try to share some warmth between their two mostly naked forms. “Do you want to tell me what this is really about?” Emily picked at her cuticles. “You’ve been having nightmares for months, Em, and it’s not getting any better. Something’s bothering you.” 

Her mouth opened. Her breath formed a steam cloud and wafted away from her. “Yeah.” She extended her arm around JJ’s waist, pulling her in close, and JJ snuggled up against her like a puppy. “When you were—When you were with Will,” she said quietly, afraid her voice would somehow travel through the universe and land on the doorsteps of all the people who should not hear it, “before Henry was born, I… I met—” She raised her eyebrows. “I ran into Haley at a cafe. She, uh, she was alone. This guy had stood her up. So we talked, and then I walked her home, and then we…” She cleared her throat. “We, uh. Y’know.”

“Just once?” JJ pressed delicately.

Emily shook her head. “No. We—We were an item, I guess, for the better part of a year. It was all the time. Whenever we weren’t on a case, I was—I was with her.”

“And Hotch doesn’t know.”

“Hotch does not know,” Emily confirmed. 

JJ’s cerulean eyes softened. “Emily.” The tender tone to her voice drew Emily’s attention, made her lift her gaze from below and turn her head to look JJ in the eyes. JJ caressed her cheek with one palm, her hands still smelling like the lotion she had applied after her shower. Emily nuzzled into the palm of her hand like a cat scent-marking affectionately upon a person who petted her. “I am  _ so sorry _ .” The apology astonished Emily. She blinked, taken aback, but she did not withdraw her face from JJ’s hands. “You have every right to grieve. You shouldn’t have to keep this a secret.” 

Emily averted her gaze. “It was what she wanted. Not to hurt him any more than she already had.” JJ peppered her face with kisses. Emily did not try to kiss her on the mouth; she wouldn’t kiss JJ until she had brushed her teeth, lest JJ discover the way a smoker tasted like an ashtray after a cigarette. “I—” Her voice broke. “I shouldn’t go against the thing she wanted for him, should I? He’s her family.” Her eyes pooled with tears. She hadn’t cried much since she had chased Morgan into that house, had stood back and watched as Morgan dragged Hotch away from the mushy pulp that had once been George Foyet’s face, had frozen in terror as Hotch gathered Haley into his arms and sobbed into her hair. 

They’d buried her as a brunette. She never would’ve wanted to be buried as a brunette. 

JJ hugged her, and with her face pressed into the crook of her neck, Emily cried. She closed her eyes and whimpered as the tears escaped from her. JJ rocked her there on the ridiculously cold fire escape, both naked except for their bathrobes, except for the city lights flashing far below. “Em,” JJ whispered, “you have a  _ right _ to grieve. You have a right to be sad. You—You lost someone important to you. That  _ matters _ .”

Did it matter? Did it really? It didn’t matter as much as it did to Hotch, and she couldn’t let him see her break. Then he would ask questions, and she wouldn’t be able to answer them. “But I love  _ you, _ ” she insisted in a thin, weepy voice, hating herself for how fragile she had just become. She shattered like champagne glass when JJ treated her with the slightest bit of kindness. “I shouldn’t—I shouldn’t—” 

JJ pushed her hair behind her ears. “What if it were Will?” This question shocked Emily out of her snivels for a moment. “What if Will gets mowed down by a bus crossing the street to the Seven-11 tomorrow? Would you tell me I couldn’t grieve for him because I’m with you now?” 

“No, of course not, but it’s different—”

“How?”

“We—We  _ knew _ it was temporary, she knew I wanted you, I knew she wanted  _ anyone _ , I loved her, but I didn’t love her the way he did, or the way I love you—”

“I never loved Will. You know that,” JJ pressed. “It would still hurt to lose him, wouldn’t it? It still wouldn’t be easy. It would still be sad, and awful, and gut-wrenching, and you wouldn’t expect me to endure it silently, would you?” Emily closed her eyes. Silent tears descended down her face. She shook her head. “Then why do you expect that from yourself?”

_ Because I don’t deserve it. _ She’d had a woman as wonderful as Haley and didn’t commit to her. She’d gone behind Hotch’s back and slept with his ex-wife, not out of spite, but just because she couldn’t control herself when a woman with honey-colored hair smiled at her. They’d both known they were something temporary, not built to last, and they’d both been okay with that, and that was wrong—wasn’t it? Wasn’t it wrong to love someone, to pour herself into them, and to know that at the end of the day, they would part ways? 

They had parted ways, after all. Haley had done it, lying in bed naked beside her, both still in a post-coital haze. “ _ I think it’s time for this to end. _ ”

It had hurt a little, but not much. “ _ You think? _ ” It hadn’t been a surprise. 

Haley gazed across the pillows at her. “ _ I think if we let it go on much longer, I won’t be able to talk myself out of loving you. And that’s not something I’m going to do to myself, or to Jack. Not again. _ ” She caressed Emily’s face. “ _ I’m sorry. _ ” 

Emily smiled at her. “ _ Me, too. _ ” 

JJ squeezed her the way one would squeeze an orange to wrench all of the juice out of it. “Emily,” she whispered to the shell of her ear, “I—I don’t think you should hurt Hotch. Not deliberately. Not right now. But… this is eating you up inside. And it’s not fair for you to have to carry that alone.” 

The shoulder of JJ’s robe had a large, wet tear-stain. “You think I need to tell him?” she asked, though she was fairly certain that was what she had taken away from JJ’s words. 

“I think you need to give yourself peace. However you find that. And if that means telling Hotch the truth… I don’t think he can fault you for it.” JJ gave her hand another reassuring touch. “Maybe he’ll even be relieved.” 

“Relieved?” Emily pressed. “What makes you think that?”  _ I’ll be relieved if he doesn’t strangle me to death or fire me on the spot. _

“That she was with you, and not someone else.” Emily’s brow creased in confusion. “They were divorced for two years… You were with her for a year. She didn’t cheat on him with you—they were separated. And all this time, he must’ve wondered who she was with, what kind of person they were, if they were treating her well…”  _ I hadn’t considered that. _ “Maybe it will be a relief for him to know that someone he already knows and trusts was taking care of her.” 

“Yeah,” Emily echoed.  _ Maybe. _ She wasn’t sure. She couldn’t imagine herself in his position—with JJ, or with anyone. For months, she had twisted herself, trying to decide if she would want to know or if she would prefer to grieve in ignorance. She still wasn’t sure what she would want for herself. But JJ was right—she wasn’t going to find any peace until she was honest. If that meant hurting Hotch… she didn’t want to see him suffer, but at least, maybe, the nightmares would stop. 

JJ patted her on the knee. “C’mon. It’s so cold out here, my ass is going to stick to this fire escape.” Emily chuckled. JJ stood, and with the city lights dancing in her hair and in her eyes, she looked ethereal. Emily stood to join her, brushing a hand over her silky hair, blanched silver in the lights. JJ lingered there. “Are you going to kiss me or not?” 

Emily parted her lips, chuckling. “After I brush my teeth.” She placated JJ, placing a hand on her hip. “People taste like ashtrays after they smoke. I don’t want you to get a taste of that.” She stuck her pack of cigarettes and her lighter into the pocket of her robe. 

“Then maybe you should quit.”

JJ lifted herself up into the window and dropped back down into Emily’s kitchen. “How did I know you would manage to bring this conversation around full circle to that?” Emily followed her. 

“Because you know I care about you and don’t like to see you slowly killing yourself with cancer in a box?” JJ faced her as she pulled the window closed after pushing the screen back into place. “Or maybe you’re just a sexy, awesome profiler who always knows exactly what I want, even before I do.” 

Emily chuckled. “Either option seems fine.” She brushed her hand down the small of JJ’s back. “Thank you.”

“Any time.”

Her eyes softened. “I love you.”

“I love you, too.” 

…

Yet again, Emily found herself on another rooftop, smoking another cigarette—this time at Quantico, lifting it to her lips, taking a long drag, resting her wrist on the bricks. Her legs dangled over the edge of the building.  _ I was so close. I almost did it. _ She licked her dry lips and, between drags on the cigarette, chewed at her cuticles. They began to bleed. 

She’d done it. She’d collected all of her things, prepared to leave quickly if that was what was asked of her, and had marched herself right up to Hotch’s office door, and had knocked, and had looked him in the eye—

She’d lost her voice. Her prepared speech vanished out the window, and suddenly, she couldn’t remember anything except Haley’s body, her cold blue lips from the swimming pool, Hotch cradling her against himself and bawling like a distraught child, and Emily’s stomach flipped, and for a moment, she’d thought she would vomit all over his shoes right then and there, and she excused herself and went to the stairs and let herself out onto the roof. 

The wind tickled her hair and cooled her. The fresh air grounded her in the moment. The sensation of her legs dangling off of the building into nothingness, so like the sensation in her dreams of her feet submerged in that icy water until she realized someone was drowning. She bounced her heels off of the wall of the building. Her shoes sat beside her on the ledge. She had taken them off. At this height, if she dropped them, she would never be able to find them, and she didn’t want to have to explain it to JJ if she lost her shoes at work and never recovered them. JJ would almost certainly have a stroke or an aneurysm if she saw Emily like this now, more than ten stories in the air, her feet dangling casually into nothingness, into an abyss which would readily consume her given the opportunity. 

There were several times in Emily’s life she had hoped for that abyss to consume her. Not recently, no—though the paralyzing feeling she’d felt when she looked up into Hotch’s eyes was unique, a torture all of its own. The pangs of inescapable dread in her stomach and the sensation she might casually shit herself and the sweat bleeding through her blouse and sticking her hair to her face… She needed the nicotine to try to chase that away.

This was new. She had never smoked at work before. Surprisingly, she had never experienced stress like this at work before, and she wondered what that said about her as a person, the types of situations she would walk into so freely with no second thoughts but admitting her own wrongdoing to someone who would be very hurt was crippling. How many devils would she confront before she confronted herself? How many evils could she look in the eye before she consumed some? How much of her was a mirror, absorbing all of the horrors they saw in this job and now reflecting them back out at the world around her? How much of her was a woman, and how much was a wolf, anxious to devour the souls of anyone who would offer themselves to her? 

Was it right for her to hurt Hotch? She kept asking herself that. JJ said it was, that she deserved to be free of the guilty… but at what cost? What great destruction would she cause, deliberately inflicting pain on another to relieve herself of some discomfort? How would that make her any different from the men she worked so hard to capture, someone willing to harm an innocent living person to gain something for themselves? 

But then again, Hotch wasn’t innocent. 

Neither was Emily. 

Neither was Haley, or any of the team. 

Whatever they had been before, this world had grabbed them and twisted them and screwed them up and made them into some pale imitation of the bright-eyed people they had been before they sat at the round table and looked at pictures of disemboweled corpses. They were not the same people they had been before. Whether they were better or worse for it—that was yet to be determined. 

The door to the roof swung open behind her. Emily’s back tightened, but she didn’t look back, expecting to hear the sound of JJ’s heels on the concrete and a scolding about sitting too close to the edge of the roof and smoking at work,  _ what _ did she think she was doing? but the telltale  _ clack-clack _ of heels didn’t come. 

“I hope you’re not planning on jumping,” Hotch said, and his shoes didn’t make a sound on the concrete, but his suit rustled as he approached her. 

Emily flicked off the butt of her cigarette. “I’m not,” she confirmed. “Wouldn’t do it here. Way too much paperwork for you and Strauss. It would be a cruel and unusual punishment for me to wage that upon you all as my parting gift.” 

“Touche.” To her surprise, he sat beside her—not immediately beside her, three feet between them, and he didn’t dangle his feet over the edge of the building. Instead, he crossed his legs, and with them tucked under his body, he appeared much younger and smaller. He sat farther back from the edge of the roof than she did. She offered him her cigarette, since it seemed polite to ask if he wanted a drag, but he held up his hand with a mild look of disgust upon his face. “Are you going to tell me why you just ran away from me like the Roadrunner from Wile E. Coyote, or am I left to hedge a guess?” 

Parting her lips, Emily allowed a gust of gray smoke to exhale from between them. “I might like to hear you guess.” The cigarette was about to go out. She picked up her shoe and snuffed it out with a firm twist, like squishing a cockroach. “It entertains me.”

“I’m not an entertainer, and I don’t particularly have the patience for guessing games right now. I think  _ that _ is a cruel and unusual punishment.” Emily grunted a hum in response. She didn’t want to talk to him right now, or ever again—why she had put herself in this position, she wasn’t sure, but she regretted it already. “JJ says you’re having trouble sleeping.”

Emily’s eyebrows quirked. “JJ goes out of her way to tell you about my sleeping habits?”

He shrugged, leaning back on the palms of his hands, head tilted up at the sunny sky. Cotton candy clouds floated by. “JJ’s very proud of her relationship with you. She likes to talk about you. Sharing things is part of how she shows she cares. Anything she keeps a secret is not something she’s prepared to be serious about.”  _ I know. It’s not something I am, either. _ Emily shifted her jaw, wondering if JJ had told him something else or if it was a mere coincidence that he spoke of secrets and relationships right now.  _ Has to be coincidence. _ JJ would never say anything out of turn to Hotch like that; JJ respected her right to privacy, even if that included her absolute inability to do a damn thing to help herself. 

“You got a point, or are you just going to keep profiling JJ?” 

“I’m making sure you know.” Hotch’s voice became pointed. “She wasn’t serious about Will. He twisted her arm into it, but she wasn’t ready, and if it weren’t for the circumstances, she never would’ve been. She told us about you four weeks in. I think that says a lot about how she experiences love.” 

Emily picked at her fingernails with one another. “Yeah.” She glanced over at him. “I know. We’ve talked about it. How she loved Will and how she loves me aren’t the same.” 

Hotch nodded, averting his gaze. “As long as you know.” His voice was quieter now, almost rueful in a way, and Emily didn’t have to ask why he went out of his way to point out such a thing to her. He could profile; so could she. He wanted to make sure she knew JJ loved her so she didn’t make the same mistakes in her relationship that he and Haley had made. “She says you have dreams.”

“We’re not dropping that, are we?”

“I didn’t climb all the way onto the roof not to have an answer, you know.” The sun touched his hair, and it looked brown in some places, like a black cat sunbathing and gaining an orange tint from the way the sun would bleach its fur. “I’m concerned about you, and so is the team. So is JJ.”

“Is my performance subpar?”

“No, your performance is excellent. It’s other things that have caught our attention.” Emily felt a bit like a teenager being sat down by a parent or an educator and listening to a list of things she’d been doing differently expressed in concern. “You’re biting your cuticles again. Smoking. Apparently not sleeping. Not eating as well—”

“What the hell is this, a psychiatric evaluation?” Hotch fell silent. Emily crossed her arms. She leaned forward to look over the edge of the roof. The parking lot, far below, made all the tiny cars look like Hot Wheels, like she could just pick them up and roll them down a cool track and watch them go, could clean them up and keep them safe and eventually save them as an important collection. It was an illusion. How much of this life was illusion? 

He didn’t press her again. “No. It isn’t.” 

The silence stretched out between them for a long moment. Emily thought she wouldn’t speak again, thought she would continue to freeze him out, which was very tempting, the idea of saying nothing until he became impatient with her and went back down to the bullpen. It was tempting. It was how teenage Emily would’ve certainly solved this problem, just keeping her mouth closed and waiting for it to go away. But that wouldn’t fix anything. That would just make it fester. And the festering years of silence and secret-keeping was what put her in this dilemma. 

“You’re right,” she said, “about JJ’s love language… that she keeps secrets when she isn’t sure how she feels. So do I. It’s safer—safer not to tell anyone that you love someone, if you’re not completely sure you love them, or that they love you back. That’s what she did with Will, and that’s what I did…”  _ With Haley. _ “…in the past.” Telling him? Was it the right thing to do? She’d already started. Could she eat her words now? 

His eyes were on her; the hair on the back of her neck raised. She couldn’t bring herself to look at him. “Is that so?” he prompted. 

She chewed the inside of her cheek. “But… maybe it’s worse… if you don’t tell them, or anyone, and then there’s a time that comes that you regret that. That you didn’t tell them, that they didn’t know. If you figure it out after, and they’re already gone, you lost your chance.”

This was her love letter to Haley, she supposed, if she was in a position to have one of those. Keeping the secret hurt too much, and she could share, now,  _ There was a woman who I loved, not as much as she deserved, but I loved, and she was beautiful, and she was independent, and she was strong, and she loved her family, and she was robbed of her life, and in another universe, she was mine and I was hers, but in this universe, I love another and she isn’t here anymore, and I loved her, and I’m not sure what to do with this sorrow because it feels so misplaced, but yet it’s still here, still mine, still rough and wild in all the ways I don’t want it to be.  _

“Hotch, I…” Emily’s mouth and throat dried up. “I did a really bad thing.” 

He inclined his eyebrows, looking up at the sky again. He shielded his eyes from the sun with one hand and squinted, as if to memorize the clouds. “I don’t think it was all that bad.” His voice was muted. “She was a really hard person not to love.” 

“You knew?” 

“You thought I didn’t?” 

_ That’s fair. _ Emily looked down at the parking lot again. “And here I thought I was making it really easy for you to kill me. Up against the edge of the roof like this.” 

“Is that why you chose to sit here? So I could push you?”

“It seemed like the most painless way to die, of the options available to me.”  _ Foyet totally had it coming, but that’s not the way I want to go out, that’s for sure. _ Emily didn’t say it. It was too soon for that kind of joke. “She told you?” she asked, quieter now, wanting to know how long he had known—how long he had sat on this. 

Hotch shook his head. “Jack did.” He licked his lips. “Thanks for an incredibly uncomfortable conversation with my toddler, by the way. I had a wonderful time explaining why Aunt Emmy and Mommy were wrestling naked on the bed.”

Emily cringed. “Sorry…”  _ Great. I scarred his kid for life in the process. _

But she didn’t feel very heavy anymore. 

Hotch pushed himself up off of the rooftop and stood, and then he offered a hand to her. “I wouldn’t have pushed you,” he said. “You’re right. Way too much paperwork involved for that.” She took his hand and let him pull her to her feet, and then she stepped into her shoes. “And Emily?”

“Yes?”

“You shouldn’t smoke. It will kill you.” 

She resisted the urge to roll her eyes. “Yes,  _ JJ. _ ” Reaching into the pocket of her slacks, she removed the box of cigarettes. She held it up to show him. He raised his eyebrows in acknowledgment. Turning on her heel, she flung it over the side of the roof. It vanished from sight. She didn’t look after it.

She didn’t think she would need them anymore. 


End file.
